


retain the unconscious traces

by celluloid



Category: IT - Stephen King
Genre: Angst, F/M, Gen, Healing, Memory Loss, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-20
Updated: 2020-10-20
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:07:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27021739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/celluloid/pseuds/celluloid
Summary: They leave Derry. They go their separate ways. They forget, retaining nothing more than faint, unrecognizable imprints.They wouldn't be able to tell you if that's good, bad, what have you will - it's just life.
Relationships: Ben Hanscom/Beverly Marsh
Kudos: 5
Collections: Trick or Treat Exchange 2020





	retain the unconscious traces

**Author's Note:**

  * For [theultimateburrito](https://archiveofourown.org/users/theultimateburrito/gifts).



_Richie was the first one to leave,_ Bill thinks, but no. That’s not right. There were others.

He can’t remember how many, but there were others, he knows that much.

The number _seven_ comes up, but Bill doesn’t think Richie was the seventh to leave. That’s too many. Was Bill the seventh? He doesn’t even know if he’s a part of this seven. Was he the eighth, then? The sixth?

He was towards the end, he thinks. But not the last. But one of them.

He wouldn’t have been any of them, though - he wouldn’t have left at all - if it weren’t for Richie, Bill knows that much. His mind turns itself over, trying to parse it out. It’s just beyond his grasp, who was the seventh to leave. A close friend. But Richie would have been a close friend too, right? If he saved his life, he thinks. But he also took off pretty quick. But not the first. But maybe the first.

The hour changes, the radio switches shows, entertainment ends and the news begins and there’s this odd permeating story about a town on the other side of the country getting wiped off the map that keeps threading itself through every update, and traffic updates because it’s one of those hours, and Bill thinks, _When did I last get my oil changed?_ and he swears he’s written it down somewhere to help keep track of the mundanities of life that sneak up on you like that.

 _Maybe Audra knows,_ because it’s useful to have shared notes like this, but he hadn’t been thinking about Audra at all.

The name escapes his grasp, though, just beyond his reach out into the endless darkness and Bill shivers at that and doesn’t know why.

* * *

The work is endless and he doesn’t know why.

Well, no. Richie knows why. He took off for— a time, an unspecified amount of time to him but a _time_ , and when he stepped back out into the land of the living he ran head first into very very very angry voicemails and a lot of them and no way to make them stop but to pay his penance for a wrong he just can’t remember committing.

He is never going to get back into Steve’s good books ever again, Richie is pretty sure. He shouldn’t _need_ references because he should have placed himself at a good enough standing in life that his voice(s) alone will carry him to wherever he wants to go, but if he ever actually does need a reference, he’s fucked.

And the worst part is he has no idea _why_.

Well, no. That’s not the worst part.

Richie has been in enough trouble over his life to know one of the best ways to get out of it - or at least to have it come to a cleaner end - is to come clean, confess, make no excuses, and just apologize. It took years and years and years of figuring it out - he’s pretty sure he only had the first inkling of a revelation as a teenager, or maybe his mom just got tired of his shit by that age and sat him down for a life lesson he actually took to heart - but he figured it out. He only ever pulls it out for the big stuff, but still, he figured it out.

Except this is the big stuff, the biggest stuff he’s ever faced, and he can’t come clean.

Turns out people don’t like _I don’t know_ as an answer. To any question. Ever. You couldn’t write it down as a test answer on a school quiz and you can’t say it when your boss and your boss’ boss and your boss’ boss’ boss (okay, Richie isn’t actually sure of how many bosses he technically has, but it feels like a lot these days) are grilling you as to why you just up and fucking bailed.

Richie can feel people’s eyes on him at the studio. Not guests or anything like that, no, it’s like nothing’s changed there. But the people he works with, fellow radio presenters and disc jockeys, receptionists, _management_. Christ. He’ll maybe smile nervously as he walks down the halls, sweat more profusely than he ever has, because he’s always wanted attention but not _this_ attention. _Look at the guy who bailed. The guy who thinks he’s bigger than the rest of us._ But that’s not who he is at all.

But it doesn’t seem that way when he just can’t up and say _this is why I bailed_. Richie knows he had a good excuse. He _knows_ it. But he can’t vocalize it, one of the very few things he can’t, and so, he’s the jackass who bailed.

At least when he’s in the booth, on the air, he can pretend everything is normal again. When he slips back into being _Rich_ and doesn’t get weird shit from co-workers unable to grasp why he suddenly started going by _Richie_ off the air. Like a child.

 _Why did you bail?_ I don’t know. It’s not good enough.

 _Why did you write ‘Richie’ on these forms? Why not Rich?_ I don’t know, but Richie sounds better now, do you think you could—

 _Where did you go?_ Home. _Where’s home?_ I don’t know.

He can stare out at the Pacific and think, _That’s wrong, I know that’s wrong,_ but not know why beyond a crawling sensation and black sewer water and then he’s crying or something stupid like that.

* * *

Ben and Bev drive and drive and drive, and they talk and they laugh and they sit in silence and glow in each other’s company. Ben feels warm and full in a way he never has before and _he would know_ his mind jabs at him for only a second before the flash of Bev’s perfect teeth brings him back to the current time and place, and Bev feels like pure sunshine, out in the open and free.

 _Do you remember how we met_ dances on the edge of Ben’s mind, because he can’t remember, only that this is and always has been the girl for him, and he’s afraid if he cuts through the moment he’ll never get it back. But he— he really wants to remember. How this started. Where they met. Trace back to the beginnings of the best thing that’s ever happened to him. It’s okay if the starting point is emerging from the fog, but it would be nice to know what was in the fog, too.

And Bev will curl up in his arms under the starlight - the moon is only just starting to come back to life, waxing from just a sliver, tiny and not all that much - as they take a break from driving to enjoy the humid night, close and safe and remembering a time _she was not close to anyone she was not safe not safe never safe_. She’ll shiver and Ben will pull her in a little tighter, nuzzle his face into the crook of her neck and breathe hot breath before kissing her and she’ll giggle, because it tickles, because it’s sweet, because he misinterpreted her being cold and yes, she was, but it was her heart in a vice, not the outside temperature goosebumping on her skin.

* * *

Bill stares at the blank page with an expression to match.

He sighs and moves the typewriter aside, settling for a worn down notebook. He turns it to the next fresh page and bores holes into it with his gaze while he clicks his pen incessantly, but for some reason, it doesn’t do anything.

It is the first time since Audra’s incident that he is going to write.

Well, no, not quite. He’s tried before. But he really thought this time he was actually going to accomplish something.

Bill sighs and puts the pen down, digging the heels of his hands into his eyes, pressing the sockets hard enough to give them a massage. The colours bursting in the empty black don’t bring inspiration with them. Bill eases up on the pressure and thinks of Audra again.

 _The incident_ , he calls it. She doesn’t call it anything, and he doesn’t know if it’s because she just doesn’t recall it - she was catatonic after all, he may write about brains going haywire sometimes but it’s not like he has any actual expertise on the subject, doesn’t know if being like that would completely erase someone’s memory - or doesn’t want to talk about it. It’s not like he ever brings it up outside of his own head. He barely remembers it himself, just knows that at some point Audra ceased to… mentally exist, maybe. And he got her back. And that’s that.

He could do something with that, he knows. It’s a creepy enough premise as is. But writing about his wife in her worst state for the consumption of others would be truly monstrous, so he doesn’t even try, even though it’s the most unnerving thing he’s been able to think of since _the incident_.

Bill sighs. Sneezes. Picks up his pen again, clicks it open, and actually presses point to paper.

He writes about having a cold. Is this some kind of trick his mind is playing on him? He’s pretty sure he doesn’t have a fever. He should check. But he’s in the middle of something here, he doesn’t have time to get up and get a thermometer, and then his eyes widen and he sits bolt upright, stock still, and swears he can hear another man crying from another plane of existence, or maybe it’s all just a memory, maybe he had his own _incident_ and this is its way of trying to break back through.

* * *

Mike leaves.

There’s nothing keeping him in his hometown. There was never anything keeping him in his hometown. Sure, there were the stories his dad told him, and he liked holding onto them, keeping a part of him alive, further extending his father’s legacy by keeping all of the history of the town with him and there for others to read and learn from. It was important and it felt right.

But with everything in ruins, he can’t help but think, _This place was outstandingly racist and I was terribly alone and surely it’s better somewhere else._

So he starts packing up what he can. He’s crazy on two fronts, he thinks, the first being that he doesn’t exactly have the money to move. He never had a great salary - he loved what he did, but the compensation was mostly spiritual if anything, nothing tangible - and the town is a wreck, so it’s not as though he’ll be able to sell his home for anything. He’ll have what he can put in his car, and he’ll have gas money, and that might very well be it.

He’s also not entirely sure where he’ll go - somewhere south, he’s pretty sure - but that’s another matter. He thinks he had some friends, and they just took off driving together. If they could do it, why couldn’t he?

The other part is that packing takes him a very long time and he has to sit and stop for breaks constantly as he’s only been recently discharged from the hospital, his leg still hurts, and he has a limp he’s not sure he’ll ever get rid of.

Mike sits down and leans back against the wall as his leg starts up again. He lets out a shaky breath, staring at a plain white ceiling, before gingerly putting a hand against where the wound was. It’s hot, but it’s not wet, so he must not have reopened it, and that’s good.

He doesn’t even remember how he ended up in the hospital. The police report didn’t really know, either, just that he got stabbed right in the femoral artery and he’s lucky to be alive.

He _does_ feel lucky, though he’s not entirely sure why.

When the burning has passed and Mike feels confident in standing again, he takes one last look around his home. It’s fine. It’s nothing. There are a few more trinkets here and there that can fit in this one last box, items of sentimental value he can ascribe later. There’s a journal with faded writing sitting beside his bed and he takes that without a second thought, rests it on top of everything else in his final box, carries the box out to his passenger seat, limps around to the driver’s side, gets in, and finally, finally, _finally_ leaves.

* * *

On a morning Richie doesn’t put his contacts in, he breaks his arm by getting hit by a bike.

It was early and he’d been feeling lazy when it came to looking presentable, so he’d put his glasses on to run a few morning errands. He doesn’t know what possessed him to get up so early, just that he had shit he needed to get done and a sudden trip to the emergency room had derailed a lot of that.

At least he has an excuse Steve and co. will accept, though. Kind of hard to argue with a verbal doctor’s note over the phone. It does make Richie’s head feel a little lighter, a little freer, or maybe that’s just the pain pills talking as the doctor applies the cast. He doesn’t know how they covered for him when he suddenly up and took off, but at least whoever’s got his usual hours today can crack jokes about his dumb ass breaking a bone.

 _And_ he can come in tomorrow high as a kite and they can get really creative with that. If anything, breaking his arm might put Richie back into people’s good books. Or at least one pen stroke closer to them.

He’d stepped out on the curb and the unfamiliar weight of his glasses had caused him to pause and fiddle with them, take them off, and as he was readjusting where he was and what he was doing he was sideswiped by a giant silver bike and his arm had broken his fall. On the pavement.

Who gets hit and run by a _bicycle_? This has to be great content for a radio show, he just knows it.

And now he’s got the rest of the day off and isn’t really feeling like doing errands anymore, even though he’s got a new one added to his list - get new glasses because these frames are broken now. Or he could just tape them up like the good old days and crack himself up while lying down on his couch, from thinking about how stupid all of this is until his head swirls with memories of losing his arm and suddenly this is _not fun anymore_ —

Richie sits up sharply, jiggling his shoulder up and down to confirm there’s still an arm there, cast bumping up against his chest, lightly feeling for it with his good hand. No, he’d never lost an arm, that would be stupid. But _someone_ had.

He almost thinks he can see his childhood playing before him, like a movie, through the haze of the pain pills. Summer vacation, and damming up a river for god knows what reason, and actually doing summer chores for money so he could take friends to the movies.

Wait, had he actually had friends as a kid? He doesn’t think he even has friends _now_ , and he’s actually grown up somewhat, can be a bearable person to be around if he puts in the effort. No way he had that as a kid. That’s where all the voices came from, he had to keep himself company.

Richie squints down at his cast, stares at it accusingly, like it’s fucking with him. Next thing he knows it’s going to grow fangs and snarl and foam at him, and _that_ definitely doesn’t make any sense. He has a pounding headache, suddenly, and wants nothing more than to just fall asleep, any thoughts of taking advantage of a sick day gone. His childhood self would be disgusted with him, but he’s feeling too miserable and so fogged up it literally hurts to care.

The concept of someone he once knew engulfs him, like a spirit from some horror movie he probably saw as a kid but someone _real_ , and the crying starts again. He can’t tell if it’s because of the headache or this. Whatever this is now. He’d had a crush he’d ignored the crush he’d moved away he’d come back he’d kept it quiet someone had lost an arm and before anyone could say anything of meaning he’d died. Richie had been furious then, he remembers that feeling all too well, almost experiences it again, but this time he’s just tired and fucking _sad_.

When Richie calms down from… whatever that was. A panic attack? He needs to start seeing a therapist, maybe. He probably always has but this time it’s beyond cracking jokes about what a shithead he is— he calls in to make sure he has tomorrow off, too. Yes, breaking his arm by getting hit by a bike is an incredible story. And it still will be in two days, when he can flush this from his system and not take it so seriously.

Crying is fine, he thinks. He has to think that, because he’s been doing a lot more of it since he came back, the emptiness of his house increasingly pronounced, how maybe he should be sharing it with someone but nobody has ever felt right and he has the sneaking suspicion that at some point, someone _had_ , and it wasn’t even Sandy.

But he still has a reputation to uphold, so at home is the only place he really _can_ cry. Which is fine by him, really - as long as he’s on the air and doing voices then it’s easy, natural even, to keep the rest of it at bay.

* * *

On a Friday night they pull up to a dive bar and suddenly Ben feels embarrassed.

“I know it doesn’t look like much,” he says, rubbing the back of his neck awkwardly, flushing under Bev’s amused smile. She definitely doesn’t care, but he’s already stepped in this, too late now, “but coming here was always kind of a ritual for me.”

“Oh?” Bev asks, grinning a little broader. Ben smiles back at her, the stupid feeling washing away because she doesn’t judge, she’s just a nice person, and whatever this is now, they’re feeling it out together.

“I mean, I’ve always liked it,” Ben says, stepping out, rushing over to the other side of the car to open Bev’s door for her. She rolls her eyes but keeps smiling, unbuckling her seatbelt and refusing the ghost of an offer of his hand to help her up. She shuts the door for herself, too. “It’s comforting, you know?”

“The routine,” Bev says as they make their way to the bar’s front entrance. “Stability.”

“Yeah,” Ben says. It takes a moment or two from when they step in, but once Ricky Lee catches his eye, the grin on his face - on both their faces - is maybe wide enough to split the two of them right open.

Ben sips at a beer in contented silence, taking in the familiar atmosphere as Bev and Ricky Lee enthusiastically exchange stories about him. They’re long past the introduction - “I thought you were never coming back, Mr. Hanscom,” and, “I don’t even remember being here that night, Ricky Lee,” and, “I’m not surprised, you really put a lot back” - and now Ben is just happy to watch Bev meet someone else who has been such a big presence in his life. Like whatever it is they’re doing now - they still haven’t discussed the possibility of Bev going back to Chicago, if she’s really just going to join him in Nebraska, surely she had more to see to in Chicago, her own entire _life_ that Ben hasn’t known her for most of - it can take a backseat to the moment of introducing two treasured people to one another.

Even though Ben has a lot more memories of Ricky Lee than of Bev. He frowns.

“So how did you two meet?” Ricky Lee asks, and Ben’s heart flutters, like this is a chance, maybe, and Ricky Lee came through for him when he didn’t want to bring it up himself.

“You know, I honestly can’t remember,” Bev says, and Ben’s heart goes back to normal. Whatever’s going to happen, it’s not going to be tonight. “I’m pretty sure we met when we were kids, but you lose a lot of stuff growing up, you know?” Still, she turns to beam at him. “But we were able to reconnect recently, and I wouldn’t trade that for anything.”

Ben’s heart swells. Ricky Lee seems to approve of them, too. Or maybe he’s just happy Ben is still alive. He’ll take it.

When he’s sobered up some and they’re back in his car, Bev turns to him, buckling her seatbelt back in. “He was really nice,” she says.

“I think that’s just the effect being a consistent customer has.”

Bev shakes her head. “No, it’s more than that. I’ve—“ _been around bad men_ “— seen plenty of people who just don’t care one way or another. They can fake it for a paycheque, but not well. Ricky Lee was genuinely sweet.”

“He is,” Ben says. “I must have been beyond fucked up when I saw him last. I can’t remember. But - and I had never even thought of this as a possibility - I’m really happy you two met.”

“I am, too,” Bev says as Ben finally turns the ignition, brings the car back to life. “I could use more people like that in my life.” She’s not entirely sure what she’s actually saying - and judging by Ben’s bewildered expression, he isn’t either - but it feels right, like this is a commitment she _should_ make for once, so she keeps going down that avenue. “Where to now?”

“I thought maybe my place, if that’s okay,” Ben says. “We’re finally close. Though who knows how dusty it is now…”

Bev laughs. “You’ve already given me the best first impressions possible, time and time again. Let’s go.”

* * *

He’d had a friend, once, who knew about birds.

He’s also pretty sure said friend had never heard of this type of bird before. Mike thinks he should call and check. He has his number—

His hand stops, hovering just a few inches off the phone. He doesn’t know why it’s stopped. Just that it’s something foreboding within him: if he were to, say, be chased by a bird, forced to hide to avoid being eaten ( _by a bird_ ), why would he want to drag anyone else into it?

Mike frowns. He rubs at his arm, where he swears he can feel the phantom pinpricks of piercing talons digging in, grabbing him, probably not to crush his arm then and there but to carry him off and that’ll be the end of him.

And he wants what… to call a friend to ask him hey, what species is this?

He blinks and looks around the dark tunnel he’s found himself in. He should be too big for it, and if he can fit in here, the bird probably can, too. He swears he can see its sharp beak pointed right at his eyes. It would be so easy to peck them out, leave him blind and scrambling, like a worm to be played with before his entire existence reaches its end, everything he’s ever been through dissolved down into being someone else’s meal—

But Mike’s friend _knew_ birds, had once said something about birdwatching on a rainy evening, before the sun set. Saw them playing in a fountain, or fighting in a fountain, before he’d left. He’d taken him there, to that spot, after. After something. And it was a nice spot, and Mike’s friend had still felt uneasy being there, he remembers that much.

A songbird chirps by his ear and Mike starts, jumping up, his head hitting the tunnel’s ceiling. Dust and old stone falls down around him, and he coughs. _How can another bird be here_ is his thought, competing with his friend’s, _It’s just a common sparrow, don’t mind it._

But his friend’s voice is far away and Mike can’t help but think he did something to cause that. They had been together, or they’d gotten separated. Mike had separated them— No, Mike had tried to bring them back together, and he feels a shooting pain in his heart, in his wrists, and that he’d fucked something up horribly, something beautiful and precious like a human life and it was _his_ fault, _he’d_ interrupted it, and the bird chirps at him again, bringing his attention back to inky darkness with one shining light at the end of the tunnel, his physique reflected in giant eyes, and he thinks, _If we could have stayed at the birdbath maybe I wouldn’t be here right now._

Mike wakes with a start in his car, the blanket he’d fallen asleep under strewn haphazardly. Sleeping in his car at nondescript rest stops is cheaper as he makes his way south, but it doesn’t make for the best nights, uncomfortable and… with something in the back of his brain, warning him.

Or maybe not warning, maybe forcing him to reexamine the past in a cloudy, easily forgotten haze as only unwell minds can. Everything he’s ever done has led him to this moment, and it’s not a great one, so what does that say about his earlier choices?

The sun starts to rise, the birds are waking up, and Mike can’t recall why the sounds of their singing makes him shiver, makes him want to apologize.

* * *

Bill used to be _responsible_.

Not that he isn’t nowadays. He’s a functioning adult. He pays bills, meets deadlines, remembers every important date with Audra and then some. But he used to be _responsible_.

Maybe for Audra, once. There had been a time he’d had to help her, he knows that much. It had been bad, too. But it wasn’t the kind of feeling that was nagging at him, stirring something up in his hindbrain, an entire other force that demanded he _stay alive_.

His brother had died. Bill barely remembers him. He remembers _having_ a brother, and then not, and then the shock of it all fading into the background, replaced with a house that was suddenly too big and a too-early memory that nothing would ever be okay again, and for the most part - every part outside of Audra, really - that had been true. He got to do what he loved, and he had a life partner that he loved, and it never really seemed to fill the hole that his brother’s death had dug.

Something had, once, maybe. When he was _responsible_. He thinks, and truly without a sense of grandeur, he just thinks, there had been a time when people had looked up to him. A close, intimate group of people. Not like his parents, not like Audra, but a friendship that had failed to survive the odds. And if it had failed, then what did that say about him? If people had left, if they hadn’t kept their circle intact, what did that say about him?

Maybe it’s a good thing he’s not responsible anymore.

* * *

When Mike has downtime from driving - in between the hours behind the wheel and sleep, a hazy period of time wasted and then gone in the blink of an eye - he looks at the journal sitting atop one of his boxes.

It’s old, and its spine is creased from a lot of use, hours upon hours spent holding it open as he wrote. But when he tries to look through it, he finds the writing increasingly faded. If he strains his eyes he can makes out portions here and there. It’s a lot of personal musings. But the dates are withering away, the ink flaking off somehow or just disappearing like an invisible ink trick he’s sure _someone_ he used to know probably would have gotten a kick out of. Any time he catches an out of place capitalization - a proper noun, he eventually figures out - it’s nearly unrecognizable. Transition words seem to stay well intact, but anything that’s an identifier is just about gone.

Mike wonders, _I wonder what piece of shit pen I used to write all of this,_ and what a waste all of his work was if it could be undone by something so small. He’s very, very confident this dates back years, if not decades, and there’s nothing actually in it.

But something does stab at his heart: it feels like he’s losing his dad all over again. He’s sure there was other stuff in this journal, it couldn’t have all been about his long-gone father, but some of it absolutely had to have been. He thinks about the concept of there being two deaths, one when you actually die and one when the last living soul you knew has forgotten you, and he thinks, he could have spared his father that fate with this journal, at least. It wasn’t anything special but it was _something_ , it carried his words beyond the grave, except the ink has crapped out and it’s almost as though he’s lost his dad for a second time.

Everything Mike has been doing recently - driving away from the only place he’s ever known, seemingly forgetting its existence in the process, he knows it was in Maine but its name escapes him, _did his hometown ever even really exist_ ; setting out for a new life when he’s ill-equipped to do so, and that’s a scary thought that’s never really occurred to him just how afraid of that he should be, he feels like he’s been afraid of so much else that this is nothing now - should have been putting him on edge. It hasn’t been.

But for some reason, losing the words in this journal is breaking him, maybe. His leg, mostly healed but with an everlasting limp, throbs. So does his arm. Something burns behind his eyes and he has to shut them, swipe an arm across them, take a moment to recompose himself.

Mike puts the journal back in the box and figures it’s about time he makes a new home for himself.

* * *

_Fuck it,_ Richie thinks. _Fuck it, I need this._

He’s only just now building his nest egg back up. He’d spent a lot of it suddenly on a trip he knows he had to go on sometime last year but can’t really remember. It’s been difficult - he’s still kind of on eggshells at work, though not as bad now, past indiscretions fading into the sands of time; also, starting savings over again from the beginning is always going to feel inadequate compared to what was there before - but he’s been doing it.

And now he’s going to blow some of that money again because he feels like he’s experiencing the cracks that line themselves throughout reality and he needs a _break_.

Tonight could be the Red Sox’ last game of the season, the Angels up 3-1 in the series, and it’s right by him in Anaheim, and he’s going to go. Either they lose in depressing fashion _again_ but this time he has a seat right up close and personal for it, or they keep their season and hope at finally breaking the curse, _maybe this year_ , alive and he has a seat right up close and personal for it.

He’s not sure what either outcome will actually mean for him - a confirmation that this past year and change has been horrible and there’s no hope, or that he’ll be able to come through this funk on the other side and be okay - but maybe he just wants to take his mind off all the fucked up shit he keeps sliding back into and watch some baseball.

So Richie buys a ticket, not directly behind home plate but pretty close, and settles in. He absentmindedly wonders if any Angels fans are going to give him shit, how well his own trash talking will hold up since he’s been a little out of practice on that front off the air, when a lone seatmate joins him.

He’s kind of tall, has a bit of an authoritative presence about him, and there’s a Sox cap similar to Richie’s own covering his bald head, and Richie smiles and thinks, _Oh, a friend._

He kicks off the small talk before first pitch because of course he does.

“Last night, huh?” Richie says. The other guy turns to look at him, and Richie swears he knows who this guy is, thinks maybe he can see a similar glimmer of recognition mirrored in his eyes, or maybe the other guy is just taking in the fact he’s sitting next to a fellow fan in enemy territory.

Other Guy sighs. “Brutal,” he says. “Clemens was fantastic, too.”

“Tell me about it,” Richie says, remembering his own cries of dismay watching the bullpen blow it in the ninth from his couch at home. “Were you here for that?”

“Nah,” Other Guy shakes his head. “Figured I’d come tonight though. Could be it for them this year, so might as well be here, right?”

“Exactly.” Richie lets the concept of waiting to see a potential (sports team, but still) execution hang there for a moment. First pitch is still a couple of minutes away; the Angels’ starter is finishing up his warmups. “So you from Boston, or…?” he probes, because this guy is going to be his friend for the next three hours or so, Richie knows it. It feels right. Familiar, somehow.

“Maine, actually,” Other Guy says.

“No shit,” Richie says. “Me too.”

Other Guy’s eyebrows go up at that, climbing under the bill of his cap. “So how’d you end up out here?”

So Richie and Other Guy find themselves exchanging their life stories - or at least what Richie can remember of his; he hardly ends up saying anything about Maine, but neither does Other Guy, though it barely registers on his consciousness, much like the state itself - as the game goes on, interrupted only by the joy of Boston taking an early lead and the dismay from Game 4 returning as it looks like the Angels are going to take the pennant.

Heading into the top of the ninth, Richie offers his hand to Other Guy. “Well, whatever happens here, I’m glad I watched it with you.”

Other Guy takes it and smiles. His grip is strong. Richie feels like in another life he would follow him into the depths of hell.

He simultaneously feels that notion all the stronger and forgets it as Henderson caps off the comeback and he and Other Guy are jumping up and down, yelling in the stunned silence of the stadium as the Red Sox take the lead. Richie feels a childlike joy he hasn’t felt in _years_ overcome him, like oh shit, oh shit, good things _can_ happen, and Other Guy is crushing him with a hug so strong and Richie doesn’t care because _good things can happen_.

They calm down when the Angels tie the game up again, and the nervousness from Game 4’s extra innings return for Game 5’s, and Richie and Other Guy sit silently, anxious at the feeling of impending doom. But this time, the Red Sox take it in the 11th, and Richie just feels the air going out of him with sheer relief. Boston’s not dead yet and neither is he.

“Hey,” Other Guy says when they’re done celebrating the last out. “Thanks for this. You were the perfect watch partner. I really needed that.” 

Richie can tell he’s not just talking about the win, but the entire night, having someone to share it with. “Same, you have no idea,” he says. “It has been a _year_.”

“It really has,” Other Guy says. “This almost felt like being a kid again. You don’t know how much you miss it until it comes back, huh?”

Richie hadn’t quite thought of it that way before, but, “Yeah,” he agrees. “Gathered around the radio, listening with friends, maybe this year they’ll break the curse…”

“Maybe this year,” Other Guy says.

On his way home, Richie remembers playing baseball a bit as a kid, back home. He hadn’t thought much about it before, but even just mentioning Maine to Other Guy had drudged something up. He remembers a kid about his age, maybe a little younger, who did well in the outfield. Another who always stayed at the sidelines and watched, or retrieved foul balls or whatever. 

He’s not sure why they come to mind, lost in a sea of so many kids he would have known and never thought twice about from a childhood he can barely remember. But that initial joy from seeing the Red Sox save their season in dramatic fashion still has him feeling giddy, and Richie wonders where those kids might have ended up, if they’re celebrating right now like he is.

He really hopes so.

It turns out that 1986 is not the Red Sox’ year. Boston wins the pennant but they don’t break this curse that’s been around decades before Richie ever took his first breath, ever inherited his Red Sox fandom from his father. They come _so close_ , though. So close it’s painful, but the kind of pain that he can appreciate, none of the phantom bullshit that’s been going through his head for the past year and change but with a reminder that it’s still possible things work out, even if they haven’t yet. There’ll always be next year.

* * *

Things are going well.

Really, really well.

So well that Ben is nervous to pop the bubble, but he’s reasonably confident no long-term damage will come from it. He’s still happily based in Nebraska, but travelling as his job dictates. Bev still has some roots in Chicago, which really, truly isn’t that far away in the grand scheme of things.

(Ben was lonely for so long, he thinks a not-even two-hour flight is absolutely _nothing_ ; he’d happily go travel six times as long, more to keep it working.

But he doesn’t have to, and that makes everything all the better. He’s still alone plenty at his place but it isn’t the kind of loneliness that filled every fibre of his being, a series of footfalls trying to crush him, kill him underneath them. It’s melancholic, sometimes even almost pleasant, like the dull throb of a receding pain. Here’s what it could be, but it isn’t, so you’re still alive and you’re still happy.)

Bev had, at first, tried to avoid falling back into the old habit of deferring to whatever the man in her life said. Then she’d dealt with the shock of fear of what Ben might do if she ever pushed back. It’s a pattern she still has to remind herself to avoid falling into, because Ben is not her father, Ben is not Tom, Ben has never raised his voice or his hand. He stays quiet and processes what she says and maybe takes her hand gently in his own and, typically, agrees.

She had been nervous, at first, when she’d talked about going back to Chicago, but Ben had only said, “I was wondering when you were going to bring that up.” She’d mentioned potentially introducing him to Kay and his eyes had just lit _up_ at that, and that was the moment Bev realized she was truly free. She would be able to have her own life, but he would still be willing to be a part of it.

So when she returns to Ben’s Nebraska home for the weekend, and he says he wants to talk, it elicits a jolt of concern. What did she do now - what is he going to do now - how is this all going to come crashing down, is she prepared, it’s been so long since she’s had to be prepared.

But Bev just nods slowly, setting her bag down and following him to the expansive living room. Huge windows, a lot of natural light but for the setting sun. Soft shadows. She has to keep reminding herself that it couldn’t _possibly_ be anything bad.

“Do you remember how we first met?” Ben asks.

Bev exhales, because that’s not what she was expecting. It can’t mean anything bad, there’s no real way for this to spin out of control. But also because, as she turns the question over in her mind, she realizes she has no clue.

She can’t remember how she met the man she’s spent the better part of a year and change with - and she can remember how she met _Tom_ of all people, so she should be able to remember this - and that should terrify her.

That Ben seems concerned about it alleviates her own, though.

“I don’t,” she says. “Does it matter?”

Because everything she’s been through to get to this point - she’s not sure if it would change anything.

“I guess not,” Ben says, flushing, and Bev knows him well enough to know he feels kind of stupid about asking the question. “I just wish I remembered. I want to remember every moment with you.”

Bev exhales a soft laugh at that. “Not _every_ moment, I’m sure,” she says. She really means it, too. She’s not sure why, but she just _knows_ that remembering every moment would be unquestionably terrible.

Ben looks up at her, and Bev wonders if he’d been reading her mind, his smile with its own sardonic tinge. “I think you might be right on that front,” and maybe that’s something they _should_ talk about, but not now, not until they’re ready, if they ever even are. “But still.”

“But still,” Bev agrees, flips the phrase around. “I’m more interested in looking at the future than the past.”

Ben’s smile lights up the parts of the room the fading sunlight can no longer reach. Bev matches him.

* * *

Mike is happy.

There’s a big chunk of his life missing, he knows, but he’s happy.

He’s settled in DC, taken up a job at the Natural History Smithsonian. Something about exploring the earliest parts of the world calls out to him; in his dreamier states, he swears he’s been there for a moment, when the world was full of oxygen and the flora and fauna matched it. Just being around artifacts and plaques that describe such a world feels familiar to him, like he can fully breathe it all in for the first time in his life.

He has a new community, co-workers, regulars he’s met up with at the bar not too far from where he now lives, a book club, something that feels like an enclosed circle but isn’t quite, could never be.

Mike remembers the feeling of a closed circle. He remembers other people closing it for him. On his own it wouldn’t be possible, but with six other bodies—

He can’t remember who they were, why this would ever mean anything to him, just that once upon a time he had a close circle of six friends and now he doesn’t. It would be more upsetting to not remember a thing about them if he didn’t have something new now. Instead, they’re just relegated to ghosts passing by in the wind that sometimes hits him, seeps right through him, pulls him back to a time he can’t remember and leaves him feeling momentarily cold and beyond nostalgic.

But that’s only sometimes. Most of the time, he has blankets to shield him, insulate the wind to nothing more than a breeze that leaves him feeling hollow at only the strangest moments.

Sometimes Mike wakes up disoriented, like he’d just had a detailed dream that would answer where any of these feelings come from, only to have it all seep through his fingers as his consciousness rises back up to the plane he inhabits. In those moments, he’ll always reach for a blank book he keeps on his nightstand, thinking one day he’ll do something with it - and knowing he never actually will, but even so, it’s still better to hold on to.

**Author's Note:**

> sorry I got really baseball towards the end there, even though I've hated pretty much everything about this season it's apparently like half my personality nowadays. the book ends in 1985, the Red Sox had a good 1986 season, Bill is canonically a Red Sox fan, I assume Richie is as well, baseball is basically a metaphor for life, it's a Stephen King novel... alas, I could not resist.
> 
> I feel like I should have something else to add here but nope, just an explanation for the baseball thing. but thank you for reading!!


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